103 Dead Ends
The background is white. ; Panel 1 Zane is standing knee-deep in snow, a trail of disturbed snow extending behind him. The wind and snow is so heavy it's almost impossible to see the pine trees behind him, and the ends of his red scarf flutter to the side. His face is mostly covered by his scarf, but his eyes are visible, and are small, blank circles. There are three parallel red lines starting about two feet away from him and leading straight along the path. In red text, with no speech bubble around it, he says "Oh no. No." The second no is floating out to the side, and there's no punctuation, giving his words a stream-of-consciousness feeling. The border is light grey and faded in places, so there's almost no distinction between the white background and the white snow in the panel. ; Panel 2. Zane runs parallel to the three red lines, kicking up snow as he turns his head to look at them. His eyes are blank circles, and his expression is distressed. The wind is blowing in his face, and his scarf trails out behind him. He says, in red text with no speech bubble, "No, no, no, no, *no*, *no*, *no*, *no*." The words aren't lined up and they get increasingly larger, with the final "no" crossing the washed-out, mostly dissolved panel border and cut off by the edge of the strip. ; Panel 4. Zane is standing near the three red lines, looking in shock and horror at Novacek's body lying in the snow about ten feet away from him, at the end of the three red lines. Spatters of blood are on the snow near the body, and blood has covered the snow all around the body. Novacek is lying on his chest with his head turned to the side, as if he's looking at Zane. His eyes are small, blank circles and his mouth is open, with a line of blood dripping from it. There appears to be a wound on his head, and his glasses are barely visible in the snow behind him. The panel border is barely visible. ; Panel 4. A close-up of Novacek's face, colored in an unnatural greyish-blue tone. The snow around him is covered with blood, and his glasses stick out of the snow awkwardly behind him, the frame bent. His face appears to be withered, with the skin around his open mouth wrinkled as if by age and deep lines under his sunken, blank eyes. There's a hole in the middle of his forehead, from which three lines of blood are falling down to the ground. The hole is puckered and deep in a similar way to the holes on people in Zane's dreams, but it's nowhere near as large, looking somewhat larger than a gunshot wound. There's also a shallow cut on the corpse's cheek, with the skin curling at the edges. The wind blows the ends of the corpse's hair to the side, and the snow is falling in large flakes. There's no panel border.